Gunn-Rita Dahle Diary: Doing it tough at World Cup Canada

The World Cup race at Mont Sainte-Anne in Canada turned out to be an experience I won't forget in a hurry. Everything started out just fine, right until my legs suddenly became completely and utterly empty of any trace of energy. The race turned into a fight to simply stay on my bike. I managed to complete the race as number two behind Canadian Marie Helen Premont, but lost three whole minutes to the winner on the last lap.

Sunday evening has arrived here in Mont Sainte-Anne. The place is probably best known for its popular skiing facilities, and is situated a short hour's drive from Quebec. We left the high altitudes of Boulder on Tuesday morning and were in place here on Tuesday evening. We met up with Lene Byberg at the airport and travelled with her up here, where we've been living in rooms together as part of the Multivan Merida Biking Team, only a short kilometre from the World Cup race circuit.

Kenneth and I focused on rest and recuperation all week in order to gather as much energy as possible before the five World Cup races of the season. I had two really tough weeks of training at high altitudes in Boulder, so my legs weren't great during the week, but not too bad either. The race-day was to be Saturday, and not Sunday like last year, meaning that we had one day less at low altitude after our stay at Boulder. Apart from that the weather had been reasonably good in the run-up to the race day, with only a few afternoon showers on a couple of days.